This sport's really kicking on

Picture: SEBASTIAN COSTANZOStan "The Man" Longinidis reflects on his comeback to kickboxing.

About 10,000 fans will pack Vodafone Arena to see Stan 'The Man' Longinidis take on Gurkan Ozkan, the 'Turkish Warrior', writes Andrew Masterson.

In the fight game, there are fights and there are fights. Fans want to see a slug-fest, preferably over several rounds. Ringside seats, after all, are not cheap, and neither is pay-per-view.

The fighters want to win, quickly if possible. Hanging around on a square of canvas while some guy tries to smack your head in is not something you want to do for longer than is strictly necessary.

Occasionally, though, a fighter achieves his aim before the ringmaster's introduction has stopped echoing around the arena.

Such was the case in December 1992, when Australian kickboxer Stan "The Man" Longinidis faced off at the Melbourne Sports and Entertainment Centre against US world champion Dennis Alexio.

The bell rang. The fighters met. Longinidis launched a kick, and that was that. Alexio broke a leg and was down for the count. Six seconds, go to whoa. The quickest bout in the history of the sport.");document.write("

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"That was a bit of an anticlimax," said Sam Greco, Australian kickboxer, wrestler and commentator. "I was there on the night. Alexio was a genuine world champion, without a doubt, but Stan has got a very low hard kick. The guy checked it, shin to shin, and ended up on the receiving end. There was booing in the crowd and people thought it was fixed, but at the end of the day, the fight was genuine and Stan was the champion."

Tonight, , about 10,000 Australian kickboxing fans will take their seats in the Vodafone Arena, with many more tuning into pay television, hoping fervently that history will not repeat itself. They will all be hoping for at least a couple of rounds of action when Longinidis, 38, away from the sport these past couple of years, makes a comeback against Gurkan Ozkan, the "Turkish Warrior", five times world champion.

The punters favour Longinidis - perhaps the most famous sportsman to emerge from Altona North - and with good statistical reason. His fight record is 83 wins, eight losses and four draws. Between 1990 and 1998, he held no fewer than eight world championship belts. As a world-class fighter, he is well up there with Jeff Fenech and Kostya Tszyu, but in Australia, the code of kickboxing just does not have the same crowd-pulling punch.

"I'd love to say it's a majority sport," said Greco, who will be talking viewers through the bout, "but it's not. It's still a minority."

Silvio Morelli disagrees. Morelli heads Blitz Publishing, a Melbourne-based sports magazine company with titles including International Kickboxer and Australian Taekwondo.

"Over the last 10 years, kickboxing has grown to be very, very popular," he said.

"In Victoria, there are up to 15 shows every year. Many of them are small, with audiences of around 2000. Others attract 5000, and this one at Vodafone will probably turn out to be the fight of the year."

Both Greco and Morelli agree, however, that you usually find a better kind of person at a kickboxing show than a boxing night. "The crowd is drawn in large part from martial arts enthusiasts," said Morelli.

Greco is a champion in his own right, and the only Australian to ever beat Longinidis. His optimism regarding the growth of the sport here is tempered by his first-hand experience of its massive popularity elsewhere.

These days, he fights primarily in Japan, where he is part of the K1 stable, the biggest kickboxing organisation in the world. He does standard bouts, mixed martial arts "no-holds-barred" bouts, cage fights and wrestling. There, he says, audiences of 90,000 are not uncommon. In two decades in the business, he has fought only a handful of rounds in Australia. The money, he says, simply is not here.

Longinidis, on the other hand, has fought many times in his homeland, a strategy that has made him a household name among fans of the sport, and a dinkum western suburbs local hero. After training in the martial art known as Bushido Kai, he had his first kickboxing fight in a Melbourne nightclub in 1982, and won it. By 1984, he was the Australian amateur champion.

He turned pro in 1987 - giving up a job as a computer programmer - after receiving an invitation to join the big US stable, Jet Centre. That year, he chalked up 17 straight wins, snaring the US, North American and Intercontinental championship belts. Several more honours accrued in the following years. In the early '90s, he won the world super-heavyweight championship by defeating US boxer Melvin Cole in just 15 seconds - a speed record that stood until he broke it himself, along with Alexio's shin.

These short, sharp fights have, predictably, generated allegations of match-fixing, but Greco fervently denies that anything untoward goes on. "It's very clean and very above-board," he said. "Unfortunately, though, sometimes you think fighters are properly matched, but when the two guys get into combat in the ring, one guy falls over a lot earlier than the other one. Look, it's the fight game. Heavyweight world champions, including myself and Stan, people think we're going to win and - bang - you get caught in the first round and you get knocked out. It happens. That's the sport."

And as for the winner of tonight's fight? Longinidis is certainly the home-town favourite, but nobody in the game is expecting a walkover. "I make no prediction about who's going to win," said Morelli. "Both fighters are pretty awesome. Stan will be hunting for Gurkan's legs, and Gurkan will be hunting for Stan's head. They're both fit, and absolutely hungry."

Stan Longinidis v Gurkan OzkanVodafone Arena, 7pm tonight

Tickets: Ringside/VIP seats sold out; tickets from $45-$150 available through
Ticketek